By Alex Emeje
The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, the other day, announced the creation of additional 56,872 polling units across the country.
He revealed this at a meeting with Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) in Abuja.
The initiative, ThisNigeria gathered, perhaps, took place because the commission was becoming uncomfortable, not only with the several resolutions passed by the National Assembly, but also the ways previous elections were held in crowded environments.
At the meeting, Yakubu also revealed that the commission had removed 749 polling units from inappropriate places, nine of them from shrines and several others from religious houses, royal palaces, and private property.
According to the chairman, after a wide-range of consultations with stakeholders as well as field work by INEC officials, the 56,972 voting units were converted and added to the existing 119,974 polling units.
Also, at a meeting two months ago, Prof. Yakubu had said that there was the need for the creation of additional polling centres to reduce the incidence of election thuggery, malpractices, and vote snatching.
Expectedly, the commission’s gladness now knows no bounds, as according to reports, 25 years since the current polling units were created in 1996, the nut was finally cracked after several unsuccessful attempts.
The implication is that Nigeria currently has 176,846 full-fledged polling units.
Nobody can stop us from coming to Lagos – Sunday Igboho
However, in addition to the efforts, the remaining 336 polling units were relocated for various reasons such as distance, difficult terrains, congestion, communal conflict, new settlements and general insecurity.
A breakdown of the newly created polling units showed that Lagos and Kano states had lion shares of the new 56,872 polling units.
While Lagos was allocated 4,861 polling units, Kano State was given 3,148.
Ekiti State, however, has the least with 250 polling units, followed by Bayelsa State with 440.
The statistics further showed that the entire 19 northern states and Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), have a total new 31,196 polling units.
Giving further insights, the INEC chairman said that following several unsuccessful attempts to create additional polling centres, despite the obvious pressure from increased number of registered voters, the commission established voting points and voting point settlements across the states and the FCT as a pragmatic response to necessity.
He said the voting points were tied to the existing polling units and the voting point settlements.
According to him, the number of registered voters in a polling unit and the voting point settlement in the FCT was used to determine their voting points, based on the upper and lower thresholds of 500 and 750 voters respectively.
The INEC chairman added that there were also the limits used for the 2019 general election.
The number of new polling units in a state is the number of voting points aggregated from those polling units having voting point, he noted.
“Furthermore, it was discovered that one polling unit in Lagos State had been wrongly categorised as a voting point, and the error was corrected.
‘’With the adjustment, the actual number of approved polling units came to 119,974 in the state.
As a result, the commission arrived at the exact figure of 56,563 voting point, in addition to 309 voting point settlements in the FCT, making a total of 56,872 voting points, he explained.
Yakubu added, however, that in view of the advanced preparations already made by the commission, four pending bye-elections in Kaduna, Jigawa and Plateau states will be the last to be conducted using a combination of polling units and voting points.
Two of these elections in Sabon Gari state constituency in Kaduna State and Gwaram federal constituency in Jigawa State, he disclosed, are holding soon, while the commission awaits the formal declaration of vacancies by the speaker of the House of Representatives in respect of Lere Federal Constituency, Kaduna State and Jos North/ Bassa Federal Constituency of Plateau State.
For subsequent election beginning from the Anambra State governorship election holding on November 6, 2021, there will be no voting point any more in the country,” he said.
Curiously, there is no gainsaying that since 1999 when the country re-launched itself to a democratic voyage, the nation’s elections have always been fraught with irregularities, malpractices, lack of election decorum and standards.
The result has dented the image of the country within and outside.
Although past electoral umpires have devised means to ending this political anomaly by introducing card readers, e-voting, staggered elections, the politicians, in their manoeuvring, have often beaten the commission to it.
In the history of elections since 1999, it appears the country has not shown readiness for democracy which claimed the life of martyrs like the late Chief Moshood Abiola, whose anniversary the country just celebrated.
The June 12 issue interestingly ought to become the signpost for democracy, with Abiola not only being the sacrificial lamb, but with many others also eliminated though political assassination and thuggery.
On the new polling units, a former member of the House of Representatives, Frank Ineke, noted that more polling units will boost confidence in the minds of the voters in that, where you are supposed to have about 25 and 30 voters, everyone in that manageable polling unit would see what was going on and anyone with any untoward or ulterior motive would be easily identified and sanctioned.
Even security personnel are not left out. They will also be afraid of being partisan or engaging in any dastardly acts.
Ineke further said that thuggery succeeds and triumphs better where you have too many people and politicians can easily buy over the people.
But in the case where people are few, the possibility of doing the opposite or embarking on snatching of votes are very minimal, because everybody’s eyes are on the watch out.
The ex-lawmaker added that with this in place, what is now required is for INEC and critical stakeholders to enact electoral laws that can deal heavily with election offenders.
According to him, they (the politicians) are the political problem of this country.
He asked who are the people that have trained and armed the riggers, thugs in the election, but politicians?
According to Ineke, after thugs are trained and used, what happens? After elections, he stressed, nobody cares for them again until after another four years of another election, during which the politicians ‘go back to them to do what they know how to do best.’
But a Political Science lecturer at the University of Abuja, Prof. Sam Amadi, said the creation of more polling centres by the commission would not only give room for free voting and counting of votes over a short period of time, but also reduce the incidence of rigging, vote snatching and overcrowding of people at centres.
On how the creation of additional polling booth can reduce election rigging, he suggested that detecting machines that could capture the behaviour of everybody at a particular voting centre should be introduced.
According to him, Nigeria should have strong laws that recommend punishment for election breacher.
Amadi wondered if politicians known to be circumventing electoral codes and rules were ever prosecuted?
However, a former Kogi governorship aspirant, Chief Robert Usman Audu, has faulted the commission, saying they had not done anything new.
According to him, the same exercise has been on for some time now.
He queried INEC for giving the North-West the highest allocation and the South-East the least, pointing out that, on the election date, Nigerians may not be amazed if the highest figures were not credited to the North-West.
Audu explained that in Kogi State, INEC was given areas that could be used as polling centres, but the commission declined.
He urged the electoral umpire to do the right thing to unite the country.
